The Gray Man

“Shouldn’t be an issue. If he makes it here at all, it will be before sunrise.” The Belarusian just nodded as he scanned the orchard through his scope. Riegel said, “You should not have shot the father.”

The sniper just shrugged as he scanned the near distance. “If you were on the scene, I would not have. As it was, I did not have leadership. I made the decision to shoot. That is what I do unless told otherwise.”

Riegel nodded. He regarded his sniper for a moment. “I saw the body. The entry wound. Good decision or not . . . it was a magnificent shot.”

The Belarusian lowered his eye from the scope of his Dragunov but continued his survey of the orchard. He betrayed not a speck of emotion. “Da. It was.”

Lloyd was tired of being ignored. “Look, Riegel. You’re wasting time. Even if Gentry does make it here, which he won’t, do you really think he’s going to come running straight up the middle of the yard?”

“It’s a possibility. He will do whatever he considers his best option.”

“That’s insane. He’s not going to storm the castle by himself.”

“I have to prepare as if he will. His options will be limited.”

“Well then, why don’t you line the fucking garden with land mines?” Lloyd’s sarcasm was delivered with utter derision.

Riegel looked at him a long moment. “Would you know where I can get some land mines?”

Just then, Lloyd’s phone chirped in his pocket.

“Yeah?”

“It’s the Tech here. Gentry is calling on Sir Donald’s phone. I can forward the call to you.”

Lloyd hit the speakerphone on his unit. “Do it.”

“Hello, Lloyd.” Gentry’s voice was tired.

“So you slipped the noose again. I was hoping to be standing over your charred remains sometime this evening.”

“No. Instead, your rented thugs just killed a seventy-five-year-old American hero.”

“Right. A terminally ill, out-to-pasture spy on the take. Excuse me while I dab the tears from my eyes.”

“Fuck you, Lloyd.”

“You’re in Geneva?”

“You know that I am.”

“Do you need me to fax you a goddamned map? Northern France is in northern fucking France, not southern Switzerland. I don’t know why you went to see Maurice. Money, documentation, weapons, another gunman, whatever. None of that shit is going to make a damn bit of difference in the long run. The only thing you need to be worried about right now is time, because tomorrow morning when the little hand reaches the eight and the big hand reaches the twelve, it is open fucking season on little British girlies up here!”

“Don’t worry, Lloyd. I’ll be there soon.”

“Why are you calling?”

“I was sitting here worrying that you may begin to relax, you may think that I died in the explosion. The possibility that you might be having a comfortable afternoon was really beginning to chap my ass, so I thought I’d give you a ring, let you know to leave a light on for me tonight.”

Lloyd sniffed into the phone. “You just wanted to make sure I didn’t give the mission up for lost. Didn’t go downstairs and kill the Fitzroys because I don’t need them anymore.”

“That, too. I don’t know how many more hit teams you have between you and me, but all the goons on earth won’t stop me from getting my hand around your throat in just a few hours.”

The Tech ran up to the three men in the back garden. Out of breath, he held up a sheet of paper on which he’d hurriedly scrawled the words, “Sat Phone—no trace.”

Lloyd frowned. He said, “Court, your death is an inevitability. Why don’t you save us all some time, make things easier on everyone, and kill yourself, then put your head in a cooler and ship it up to me.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll supply the head. You get the ice chest ready. Soon enough, I’ll give you the opportunity to put the two together.”

“Sounds like a plan, buddy.”

“Come tomorrow morning, Julius Abubaker is going to have to find himself a new bitch to bargain with, because when you fail, and you will fail, either I will kill you, or someone else will.”

Lloyd’s face twitched in anger. “I’m nobody’s bitch, you knuckle-dragging bastard. I’ve seen a lot of smug scalp hunters come and go in my days. You’re no different. You’d do well to remember that even with your reputation and your spooky nickname, you are just a glorified door kicker. You’ll be dead in a few hours, and I’ll have forgotten about you before the maggots finish you off.”

There was a short pause. “Let me guess, Lloyd. Your dad was somebody.”

“As a matter of fact, my father is somebody.”

“Figures. See you soon.” Gentry hung up the phone.

Riegel hid his smile from Lloyd. The Tech still stood with his hands on his knees, breathless from the run. He said, “Gentry sounds like he really thinks he’ll make it here.” There was palpable terror in his voice between his gasps for air.

Lloyd snapped at him, “Get back to work. I want helicopters in the air, I want men on the trains, and I want him dead before he gets to Paris!”

An hour later, Riegel stood on a flat rampart lining the rear of the chateau’s roof. He looked out through the decorative battlements at the cold but sunny afternoon. Three teams of Belarusians, each consisting of two men with assault rifles and radios, walked the grounds in a crisscrossing pattern. The sniper and his spotter were on Riegel’s left, high in the tower with a near-perfect 360-degree view of the lawn in the back and the lawn in the front. The helicopter with the thermal imaging equipment had just radioed in that they were on their way back from Paris with all the gear and the two-man team of engineers that could set it up in under an hour.

The Tech had put a hit team on the TGV from Geneva, the high-speed train to Paris. They’d reported no sign of Gentry. Three more teams and most of the available watchers were taking up positions on the highways through the French Alps that the Gray Man would have to traverse if he was traveling by car or motorcycle. Three more kill squads were in Paris. It was a natural staging area, a city full of his known associates and a city in which he might well stop for supplies or support.

There was not much left for Kurt Riegel to do at the moment but wait.

Still, something was bothering him.

It started out as a nagging irritation in the back of his mind and grew by the minute as he reconciled himself to the fact that he’d tidied up all the ends of the operation that he could at the moment. But it somehow remained after he could think of no other preparations to make.

Finally he closed in on the origin of his ill ease: something the Gray Man had said to Lloyd. Sure, Gentry would have figured out this op against him had to do with his assassination of Issac Abubaker. But what did he mean by Lloyd being Abubaker’s bitch? How could Gentry have known that Lloyd wasn’t just an employee of Abubaker, or of the CIA, doing a job? That he did his job for some other reason. Some sort of bargain. Riegel had read the Tech’s handwritten transcripts of Gentry’s phone conversation with Lloyd earlier in the day, before Riegel was on site. There was no mention by Lloyd or Fitzroy of LaurentGroup or the true reasons behind this endeavor. Why on earth would the Gray Man assume this operation involved some sort of deal between the parties, which clearly the term bargain implied? Why on earth would the Gray Man assume Lloyd’s life hung in the balance of his success?

It was another full minute of speculation, and when the answer came to Riegel, the sign came to him like it would were he hunting prey on safari. When tracking an animal, a skilled hunter can find indication in the animal’s tracks, indications that it knows it is being pursued. It had picked up a scent. It had seen movement. The gait changes when prey senses trouble, and only a uniquely adept hunter can pick up this subtle alteration in his quarry’s tracks.

Kurt Riegel was such a hunter.

Gentry had more than a scent of the real operation against him. He had specific details that he only could